You can't think 'Dole' without thinking 'Bob Dole' and cartoons and third-person good times. He was one of those politicians: the kind you jabbed but were happy enough to have around.

Bob Dole is not a romantic, at least not an immediate one. Bob Dole is not one to waste a lot of time on metaphor.

Bob Dole is not a bitter man. That part is jarring. His life was hard.

Bob Dole. He's like the neighbors' Labrador retriever your dad used to curse for all that barking, all that darn digging in your mom's tulip bed, and now look, you live next door to a godforsaken pack of teeth-baring rabid Pomeranians, and, good golly, Bob Dole!

The brain is suspended in a kind of thick jelly inside the skull, and a helmet can't keep it from sloshing around. If you hit your head hard enough, the brain goes bashing against the walls of the skull.

All holidays can be good times.